Afghan Troops

The Kremlin probably won't meet the goal of pulling one-fourth of its soldiers out of Afghanistan this month because U.S.-backed guerrillas are overwhelming Afghan troops left behind, Western diplomats said Tuesday. Meanwhile, Kabul Radio reported that guerrillas Tuesday staged rocket attacks on Kabul, the Afghan capital, for the second straight day, killing at least two people.

U.S. Marines battled Taliban fighters for control of a strategic southern town in a new operation to cut militant supply lines and allow Afghan residents to vote in next week's presidential election. Insurgents appeared to dig in for a fight, firing volleys of rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and missiles from the back of a truck at the Marines, who were surprised at the intense resistance. By sunset, Marines had made little progress into Dahaneh beyond the gains of the initial predawn assault Wednesday.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan -- The effectiveness of the alliance between the U.S. military and Afghanistan's security force rests on a particularly delicate question: Will sufficient numbers of Afghans put up a good fight against the Taliban -- starting very soon? Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's strategy to reduce the U.S. role in Afghanistan includes increasing the training of the Afghan force, doubling its size and enhancing its capabilities.

In the enveloping darkness of a starless summer night, the sizzle-thump of incoming Taliban rockets is swiftly answered by the percussive boom of outgoing U.S. artillery. But the American troops manning this base in eastern Afghanistan know that their elusive nighttime foe can slip away to sanctuary in Pakistan, just 20 miles away.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and The Outskirts Of Marja, Afghanistan -- Thousands of U.S., British and Afghan troops moved to seize the Taliban stronghold of Marja early Saturday in what the Marine general leading the assault called a "big, strong and fast" offensive aimed at challenging the insurgency's grip on a key southern Afghan province. Rounds of tracer fire lighted up a starry, predawn sky as waves of troops, ferried in by helicopters, descended on the farming districts that surround the town.

Two soldiers believed to be American were killed and 13 were wounded Friday in a major clash in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, while fighting in the south was reported to have killed as many as 50 suspected militants and more than two dozen civilians. A U.S. AH-64 Apache attack helicopter supporting the evacuation of wounded troops in the east made what NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, labeled a controlled landing after possible engine failure.

Western military officials announced Wednesday they had reinstated use of a weapons system employed in a strike that killed 12 people inside an Afghan family home, most of them women and children. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said an investigation found that the weapon had not malfunctioned in Sunday's strike, but that it still was not known why the house was rocketed. The deaths marked the first major episode of civilian casualties in a massive military offensive, spearheaded by U.S. Marines, which began before dawn Saturday in and around the southern Afghan town of Marja.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A U.S. service member was killed Thursday in Afghanistan's eastern Paktia province when a man in an Afghan National Army uniform opened fire at a joint military training base, provincial officials said. The assailant was killed in return fire by North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces, said Rohullah Samoon, a spokesman for Paktia's governor. “It's too early to say whether the Afghan soldier was a Taliban infiltrator,” Samoon said, adding that a joint investigation by Afghan and coalition forces was underway into the incident in Paktia's Gerda Seri district.

As top administration officials appeared before Congress today to defend the troop buildup in Afghanistan, and with the Pentagon saying the first additional troops will deploy within two to three weeks, a key Senate Democrat questioned a central element of President Obama's new Afghan strategy. Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he had questions about the "rapid deployment of a large number of U.S. combat forces" into Afghanistan.

Soviet armor moved into the center of Kabul on Friday in a strong show of force one day after the start of a unilateral cease-fire declared by the Communist Afghan government. Western diplomats said they were baffled by the positioning of Soviet tanks and armored personnel carriers at major intersections and near key government buildings. The diplomats also reported breakdowns in the cease-fire almost as soon as it began early Thursday.